War for the Overworld

Work continues unceasingly on the upcoming Patch 2.0. There’s so much exciting stuff happening right now that we’re dying to share with you; but alas the secrets must be kept for a little while longer, as we prepare for the biggest release since WFTO’s launch!

In case you missed it, a few months ago we put out some videos highlighting the lesser known heroes of Patch 2.0. These showcased new animations for a whole swathe of units, which you can catch here:

There’s still quite a few more that are underwraps, but hopefully that taster should satiate your cravings for now.

Calling All Map Makers & Intrepid Underlords: Closed Alpha Test!

In the meantime, we’re looking for some committed and dedicated members of our community to join us on our (not so) top secret community testing team, as part of a closed alpha process for the Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 release.

In particular, we’re very keen to introduce some of our community map creators to the extensive suite of new features and improvements coming to the Map Editor in 2.0.

We’ll be reaching out directly to some of the content creators; but if you’re interested in getting a sneak peek, and helping us ensure the new features are working well and are expansive enough to enable highly-creative endeavours, then please get in touch. Send us your Steam Workshop profile in this thread or send us a private ticket on UserEcho![brightrockgames.userecho.com]

The hoar frost has settled across the once verdant fields of the Overworld, coating the land in the icy fingers of encroaching death. In the caverns below the fires of the foundry lie extinguished for the first days in months as the development Imps close up shop to spend time with loved ones and family.

While we lock up the office and make our way out of the door until 2018 we wanted to reach out and extend our festive greetings to all our fans and customers and wish you all the very best of times. We thought we’d also use this opportunity to share a few messages, thoughts and previews of things that were, things that are and some things that have not yet come to pass.

So please Underlords before you indulge in the season’s graces read on!

Steam Awards 2017 - Thank You for Your Support!

In the Steam Autumn sale, we humbly put forward our bid to become a nominee for the Labour of Love award, the award in the 2017 Steam Awards that we felt the best fit the five-year journey since first leaving Kickstarter!

If you missed it we hastily put together a small infographic on the journey thus far which you can see below and we also shared our thoughts and feelings as to that journey in our Labour of Love and Message of Thanks posts.

[wftogame.com]Five years of sweat and toil summed up in a handy image!

It is with a tang regret that we must announce that we have not made it as one of the nominations for this award despite the best efforts of ourselves and the community.

This result was not entirely unexpected, we knew it would be an uphill battle to top many of other great games out there with incredible teams and we have to congratulate all the nominees for every Steam Award and we’d like to thank all our fans who took the time to vote for us and encourage you to now vote for the games you’d most like to see win the Awards!

Warm congratulations to the nominees, there's a lot of great games on display!

Even though we did not make the cut we were deeply humbled by the response we saw to our bid. You came out in force to support us and showed us just how much you love WFTO in its current state. You showed us that our game is something we could be proud in a way we never thought possible by raising our review score a whole percentage point overall and up to a staggering 98% recently!

[wftogame.com]Unmanly tears were shed upon reading this figure

Time and time again we’ve leant on the support of the community as we’ve gone through hard times, we’ve faced delays, difficult releases, countless bugs and issues and even the spectre of bankruptcy together and as always we cannot thank you enough. Together we’ve made WFTO into something great and the best is yet to come, inspired by your support we’re confident 2018 will bring the best version of WFTO yet!

War for the Overworld in 2018

We can’t deny that next year is going to be a bittersweet one for War for the Overworld, with Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 travelling down the tunnels of the internet to usher in the final form of War for the Overworld in Q1-Q2 2018.

This collective update will be the largest, most involved and significant in War for the Overworlds and is likely to touch nearly every corner of War for the Overworld, shifting the game into high gear and hopefully delivering what will be the ultimate version of our first and most loved game.

Sadly we’re still quite some ways away from a release so we’re not quite ready to spill to beans on everything that will be coming, and a few of you will already know the features revealed so far but for the benefit of those not yet in the know here’s some of what’s coming:

New Singleplayer Campaign - Focussing on the Underlords and replayability factor

New Underlord AI - Built from the ground up to be more flexible, intelligent and challenging

New Veins of Evil Aspects - New units, defences, spells and more make their debut

New Dungeon Themes - New Underlords come with their own new themes, including Dungeon Hands!

More Map Editor Features - Get creative with new features in the Map Editor including My Pet Dungeon support and more!

We’ve also released a few teaser concepts in our previous posts as a thank you for all your support and to give you some idea of what’s coming. So we couldn’t well go without showing you something new today!

While our previous previews have focussed entirely on what is new today we’ll show off some things that are changing to make the game better. In particular, a number of swanky new animations coming to the game to inject some additional personality into some units whilst they work!

Please note that all previews below are very early Work in Progress versions and there’s still plenty of work to be done!

And it’s not just units getting some love, this defence, in particular, has been needing a touch up for a while

We can’t wait to get all this in your hands, but alas we’re not quite ready yet. Rest assured that in the new year we’ll be able to share so much more as our final update is realised.

After that, we’ll keep our eyes on WFTO and arrange to make some passes on supporting existing features but we’ll also be moving our team fully onto our new project, which we’ll likely share some details on later in 2018!

Happy Holidays from Brightrock Games

All that remains to be said now is from all of us at Brightrock Games we wish you all happy holidays, merry Christmas and happy new year regardless of who, what or how you celebrate and we hope that the new year will bring you all joy and happiness.

It remains to be said that until the new year our office will be closed but some of us will continue patrolling our forums and support infrastructure to answer questions or help if needed, but response times will be slower.

The end of the year is fast approaching, and our imps are hard at work on new content for you to sink your gnarled teeth into in 2018. In the meantime we have a short announcement for you: another Worker has joined the cause, and made a call for charity!

Introducing the Yogscast Worker

Indeed, this stout little fellow was recently unearthed in an old mineshaft deep in the Underworld, where he was found munching his last Jaffa Cake. He doesn’t speak much, and we don’t even know his name; but what he will do is sing about digging a hole. Oh, endlessly will he sing it! Ceaselessly!

You can acquire the Yogscast Worker and his diamond pickaxe, along with dozens of other games, in this year’s Yogscast Jingle Jam[www.humblebundle.com]. By donating the calling price of $35, this annoyingly chipper fellow and a whole slew of incredible games and content can be yours, with every drop of the proceeds going to charitable causes!

[wftogame.com]“... I am an imp and I'm digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, digging a hole!”

Who says that a little evil can’t change the world for the better? Now please take him off our hands and use him as a Worker skin in War for the Overworld, before his warbling attracts a wandering Augre and we have a little accident.

The Cynical Imp Is Still on the Campaign Trail

Before we leave you, Underlord, the other member of our growing troupe of charitable Workers, has asked us to remind you that he is still fighting for the (no doubt deserving) cause of dungeon workers’ rights.

If you’re feeling particularly charitable, The Cynical Imp will hit the campaign trail for a small donation of £1.99, with all of Brightrock Games’ proceeds going directly to GamesAid[www.gamesaid.org], our partnered charity (Registered UK Charity # 1081706). They are a team of incredible individuals that work with the UK games industry, acting as an umbrella for smaller charities, to help those in need.

For Underlords willing to give a little extra, you can also get your Hand of Evil on the previously-exclusive Kickstarter and Founders Dungeon Themes - all in the good name of charity!

The relentless march towards the much anticipated Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 continue, with great strides being made each and every day. Though we are super excited about the upcoming content, we know better than to neglect our valued Underlords that have encountered issues. So we’re rolling out a hotfix to steel you against the approaching winter months.

We also have a few announcements for you, namely reminders of the upcoming end of Steam sale, as well as the rapidly approaching closure of submissions for Steam Awards nominations!

Read on Underlord.

Hotfix Patch 1.6.66f1

Our development imps have been hard at work for the past week addressing some issues you highlighted to us in the latest patch. As always we’ve looked to resolve any reports as efficiently and speedily as possible, and we’re always looking for more. Never ones to cease our constructive efforts though, there are a few minor improvements sprinkled on top of this hotfix too.

Gameplay

Volcanic Bridge spell can now be cast on Blood tiles

When you sell a defence or construct on a Stone Bridge it will no longer also sell the bridge

Removed push forces caused by livestock and Ghouls, meaning they can no longer push other units, but can be pushed themselves

Visual Changes

Reduced the saturation on the instruction arrow, making it a little less obnoxious

Small visual changes to the Spirit Chamber

Some corrections to the possession view of units based off the “Lord O’theland” model

Text Updates

Updated Juggernaut name to make it more appropriate in Simplified and Traditional Chinese

Updated mutator tooltips to give more information about disabling Fortified Walls, and disabling the ability to dig them out (all languages)

Fixed a few typos

Miscellaneous

Updated Unity Engine to 5.4.6f3 from 5.4.5p5 yielding a few minor improvements

Please note that game engine updates are complicated affairs and can cause unexpected issues. This is only a minor leap and we believe we caught every issue, but please don’t hesitate to report anything that seems out of place.

Added secret holiday cheer!

Removed some unused audio.

Bug Fixes

Sacred Earth will now display the correct gold texture in the icy terrain theme

Fixed an issue where prisoner AI would continue to search for a bed to make in the Lair, which they could not reach, causing performance issues when a player had many prisoners

Icy terrain theme should now load more consistently

Empire Workers should now only play Empire audio

Fixed a number of issues with the Ember Rift textures

Unit animations should now slide slightly less when the animation displays them as stationary

Steam Sale Ending Soon

Before we begin the main course below, we thought we’d make a shoutout to remind you all that the Steam sale will be ending tomorrow!

The positive feedback was so overwhelming, and we simply cannot thank you enough. In our bid we talked about our journey: the work, energy and lifeforce that we have poured into War for the Overworld; the trials and tribulations that we’ve faced, and with them how the strength and support of our community has helped us drive WFTO to become something truly worthwhile. Your response has driven that home more than ever.

The fact is that there’s a great deal with the WFTO project that we were not happy with. The launch stands chief among them, where we made so many mistakes. We’ve always been hard on ourselves, but also driven to make WFTO something truly special. Nevertheless, there’s been a looming spectre of our numerous failures in the project, which has hung over us for a long time.

When we made our bid last week, we did so knowing that we had done a lot for WFTO and our customers, but not knowing what that had truly meant to you. To be told by so many of you that we deserve such a nomination was deeply touching and extremely humbling. You showed us that the work we’ve put in from the very start, past release, and right up to today is praiseworthy; and that although WFTO may never be the perfect child we want it to be, that it has some right to claim a spot as a respected title. What more can a developer wish for with their first project?

So from everyone at Brightrock Games, we’d like to humbly thank everybody who took the time to nominate us, leave a comment, or even leave us a review. We cannot thank you enough for an incredible five years!

[wftogame.com]

We want to give an extra special shoutout to everyone who left a review, because you’ve raised us past the 78% barrier on Steam! This 1% may not seem like much, but it means a whole lot to us!

As a small reward, here’s one more teaser of our upcoming content.

[wftogame.com]From concept to work-in-progress VFX!

If you’re not sure what all this is about, you can read our bid for the award here. If you’d like to support us (and you don’t already have a deserving nomination for the category!) then you can do so on our store page.

We'd like to humbly request that our fans, customers and fellow Underlords consider nominating WFTO for the "Labour of Love" category. A category defined by the commitment shown by a developer towards their game and community long after the release of the game itself.

We know that this must appear somewhat self-serving and it is not usually in our nature to seek any sort of recognition beyond the appreciation we already receive from our fans for the work we do. But we felt that this category so accurately summed up our journey with WFTO thus far and where we hope to take it over the coming months.

To help illustrate our commitment we've even (very hastily) prepared a small infographic about this journey.

[wftogame.com](Click to expand)

If you're happy with all that you can head straight to our store page if you're happy to nominate us.

For the Journey

War for the Overworld has dominated our lives for the five years since we successfully funded the project on Kickstarter, not a day has gone by where some work hasn't been poured into it on some level.

But through it all we've stayed strong, we reaffirmed our commitments to our backers, customers, fans and the game itself. We've worked hard, sometimes through nights, weekends and holidays and into the next morning to see WFTO take the shape we hoped it would.

We've released patch after patch, update after update bringing new features, fixes and releases. We've deployed platforms to help us best facilitate your needs and we've taken on board as much community feedback as we can. We have built our company, Brightrock Games around our community.

Our hope that one-day WFTO could live up to the lofty expectations both we and our fans have for it. We've done so much in the 5 years of development, not least bring a uniquely challenging and large scoped game to life.

In just over two and half years since the launch from early-access we've:

Released 56 Free Patches, 6 Major and encompassing over 2400 fixes, changes and features

Added much requested features like the Map Editor into the mix

Introduced new game modes through the Crucible and My Pet Dungeon expansions

Pushed out maps, balance adjustments and much more as fast as we can

Released three expansion

Heart of Gold - We gave away free to anyone who owned the game up to one month after launch

Crucible - Which was free for everyone!

My Pet Dungeon - Developed at huge community request, and offered on a try before you buy basis!

WFTO is so very different from when it was released and there's still so much more to come, even as we approach the final stages of this production. With Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4, which promise to be our biggest releases yet we've got some exciting things in the pipeline. Stuff like:

Underlord AI Overhaul

A New Single-Player campaign with focus on Underlords & Replayability

More than half a dozen new aspects in the Veins of Evil!

New Dungeon Themes

More Map Editor features (Yes including My Pet Dungeon support!)

And that's just what we can talk about, there's a great deal of stuff still under wraps. Just waiting until the day we can release the news and let us assure you that if everything goes according to plan you will find this to be by far the most important update that WFTO has ever received.

You don't have to take our word for it though, here are a few teaser concepts to get you salivating for more!

[wftogame.com][wftogame.com][wftogame.com][wftogame.com]

For us all here at Brightrock Games, War for the Overworld has truly been a labour of love and we hope that you will consider us for your nomination in "The Labour of Love" category!

If you believe that we are worthy then you can vote for us on our store page (or just grab the game at a huge discount!)

Hi guys, after a long night at the office getting ready to reach out to you we came back this morning to the incredible sight of your support. We didn't know how this would go down and we cannot thank you enough for every kind word you've written for us.

It means a lot to see that the five years of our lives that we've dedicated to WFTO have meant as much to you as it has to us, what we've seen today has been incredibly humbling and we hope that our upcoming content will be enough to reward you for your incredible incredible support!